Miriam Kramer is a Policy Analyst at EPI.  Since joining EPI in the summer of 2006, she has gained expert knowledge of student aid disbursement patterns in Canada though her work managing the Measuring the Effectiveness of Student Aid (MESA) project.  She has also gained fluency in the areas of Aboriginal education, apprenticeships and training, and institutional aid through her research and writing for various EPI projects.

Prior to joining EPI, Ms. Kramer was the government policy analyst for the New York Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) from 2000 to 2006.  There, she directed the organization's higher education campaign where she coordinated thousands of students and community members in lobbying, media, and other efforts to advocate for more affordable, accessible, and quality higher education in New York.  In that capacity, she produced policy-oriented documents on higher education policy, including Shifting the Burden (2002) and Overburdened (2004), which look at affordability issues in post-secondary education.  At NYPIRG, she was also responsible for budget analysis of the New York state budget and also for writing fact sheets and briefs for public consumption based on these analyses.  She has also published in the area, including

Ten Years in the Making: the Pataki Administration Record in Higher Education (2005). 
During her tenure at NYPIRG Miriam was quoted in hundreds of newspaper articles, including the New York Times, represented NYPIRG as a guest lecturer at colleges and universities, and participated in panel discussions, forums, and coalition meetings, such as New York State Public Higher Education Conference Board, Board of Directors of the Fund for Higher Education Research, and the Student Labor Action Project.

Before joining NYPIRG, Miriam lived in Jerusalem and worked at Kol Ha-Isha, the Jerusalem Women's Center.  There, she helped established the country's first institute for women's education and empowerment.  She also taught at and was involved in curriculum development for the Kedma School, an experimental community high school for low-income students.
Ms. Kramer earned a Masters in Gender Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in English Literature from Queens College, with minors in economics and Business and Liberal Arts.  She lives in Toronto with her partner Aaron Levy, the Rabbi/Director of Jewish Life at the University of Toronto, and their six-month-old son Elior.